


Subversive

by lmc291



Series: it's not sedition if you win [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Uchiha Mikoto, Bechdel Test Pass, Character Study, F/F, F/M, Mikoto Has Agency, Mikoto Has The Mangekyo Sharingan, Miscarriage, There's Something Rotten in Konoha, Women Being Awesome, and you will pry that headcanon out of my cold dead hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:21:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25151566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lmc291/pseuds/lmc291
Summary: Uchiha Mikoto is eight years old when she and her previously no-name civilian teammate take turns dragging each other back to the village gates and it takes everything she has to not collapse at the feet of the guards. She vows, right there in the shadow of the village walls, that she’ll never be this weak again.A character study in vignettes (and drabbles, and almost-drabbles).
Relationships: Uchiha Fugaku/Uchiha Mikoto, Uchiha Mikoto/Uzumaki Kushina
Series: it's not sedition if you win [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1811242
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28





	Subversive

Uchiha Mikoto is eight years old when she and her previously no-name civilian teammate take turns dragging each other back to the village gates. It takes everything she has to not collapse at the feet of the guards, but she won’t shame her clan by acting so weak. She struggles to catch her breath as Saori stammers in near hysterics through her report.

Mikoto’s heart hammers so loudly that it’s a wonder no one else can hear it. When she closes her eyes against it, all she can see is the massive sword cleaving Itsuki in two.

The guards snap-to, but Mikoto barely registers the activity. She knows Kei-sensei will be dead by the time the team they scramble reaches him. She saw it in his eyes when he ordered them to flee. 

She vows, right there in the shadow of the village walls, that she’ll never be this weak again. 

***

So she trains. Mikoto trains and trains and trains until her arms shake and her legs can barely keep her upright. Her parents are distant in their approval-- while neither are terribly affectionate, producing offspring who become strong shinobi contributes to the glory and honor of the clan-- but her mother isn’t subtle when she clucks at the calluses forming on Mikoto’s hands.

Hyuuga Himawari (beautiful, brilliant, _psychic_ Himawari) drops a jar of her prized lotion into Mikoto’s weapons pouch the very next morning when they run into each other at the market.

***  
Mikoto’s specialty is stealth and sabotage for a reason.

Though the connection is through the distaff side, she is still the great-granddaughter of Uchiha Izuna. From birth, she was raised to have all the graces of a court lady. She can be quiet and gentle, a great beauty or a demure maid. She can be anyone and no one. With the sharingan, she is invisible-- a whisper, a nightmare. They’re skills she folded into her ninja arts just as thoroughly as she mastered shurrikenjutsu.

Because why be a bludgeon when you can be a scalpel?

She starts out small-- sneaking past civilians before trying her luck inside the Uchiha District. When she can sneak past the elders, and even into the clan head’s house, with none the wiser, she branches out. Can she slip by the Inuzuka and their ninken? The Aburame and their kikaichu? Can she stay out of the Nara shadows?

(Shikaku catches her and just looks at her with a raised eyebrow-- says nothing but “stay out of the forest.”)

***

Kushina, Mikoto decides, is the bright light at the center of her universe. The first time they meet (when Kushina is placed on their team to round it out again), it’s all Mikoto can do to keep from sitting there and staring at her like a complete idiot. Kushina _glows_. She glows with happiness, with energy, with a kindness rarely seen in their line of work, with chakra.

There’s something magnetic about that girl, and Mikoto thinks she could spend the rest of her life basking in her radiance.

***

No one knows Mikoto has the mangekyo sharingan.

For all that the sharingan is all-seeing, the men in her clan-- the elders, the loremasters, her ancestors-- they were all shortsighted. The so-called “Curse of Hatred” is so… _pedestrian_. Murder is not the only way to unlock the talent. 

She studies. She prods. She trains. She meditates and prays in the shrine. And when she steps in front of an attack meant to remove Kushina’s head from her shoulders, the black flames of Amaterasu erupt from inside the enemy jounin’s mouth, burning him from the inside out. 

She resolves to never tell a soul in her clan about it. The clan would just use her-- try to take advantage of her friendship with Kushina. She’s not blind. Mikoto knows how bad relations are between the village and the clan. If any of the hardliners knew she had a way to control a bijuu…

(Kushina shoots her a _what the FUCK was that_ look before thinking better about asking. She knows about secrets, and even though Mikoto knows about her biggest, furriest one, Clan Things are different.)

***

The first time she kisses Kushina, it’s like the stars aligned and the heavens sang. They both know it can never be anything more serious than stolen moments away from prying eyes. Mikoto knows the clan elders will be negotiating her engagement to Fugaku soon.

That first time is a mistake. Mikoto prides herself in her emotional self-control, how nothing can break her porcelain-calm demeanor. It’s a moment of weakness that she regrets as soon as she hears Kushina’s startled gasp. But then Kushina parts her lips, threads her fingers into Mikoto’s hair and _pulls_ , and Mikoto decides for the first (and probably last) time in her life to follow where her emotions take her.

The last night they make love is the night before Mikoto signs her betrothal contract. No, she feels no love for Fugaku, but she is a woman of her word and she will not cuckold her future husband, not even if the wedding won’t take place until after her promotion to jounin. They lay on Kushina’s bed, still naked and sweat cooling, and she wishes she could just stay there forever.

Kushina presses a kiss to the crown of her head. “If you’re worried you’re breaking my heart, you can stop.”

“What?”

Mikoto feel’s Kushina’s amused huff under her cheek. “You and me? We’re always going to be best friends. No matter what.”

She hides a smile, but Kushina always knows when she does that and she feels the gentle tug on a lock of hair telling her so. Drawing a nonsensical design on Kushina’s hip, Mikoto decides to offer an olive branch. “You should give Minato a chance.”

Kushina hums noncommittally.

***  
Everything about the mission to Uzushio sets Mikoto’s teeth on edge. Everything-- from the fire in Kushina’s eyes and Danzo Shimura’s attitude during the briefing to the bodies still strewn in the streets when they arrive. Kushina nearly losing control of the Kyuubi? That’s not so much a surprise as it is the icing on an already terrible cake.

She catches Shikaku alone. It’s the end of his watch and the start of hers, and she silently motions with her chin to the roof. If they’re quiet enough, Kushina and Minato could continue their peaceful slumber. They watch the moonlight reflect like diamonds in the canals for a few moments, though Mikoto keeps the corner of one eye trained on Shikaku.

“It’s going to be bad, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Yeah it will be.”

***

It _is_ bad, and their only saving grace is how politically connected they all are.

***

Their wedding has all the pomp and solemnity that befits Fugaku’s status as clan heir, but neither the participants nor the witnesses are under the impression that this is anything but a strategic, arranged match. It’s a way to unite factions within the family and it’s how they’ve handled conflict for centuries.

Mikoto doesn’t think she’ll ever love Fugaku-- doesn’t think about how she’s never been attracted to any man-- but they have the foundations of a solid partnership, and that’s what’s important when leading a clan or raising children. Perhaps they’ll even grow fond of each other. She supposes that would be tolerable.

Regardless, it gives her the opportunity-- the excuse she never before had-- to interact with other clan heads, with leaders in the merchant guilds, and other high ranking village notables. By the end of the night, she has twelve separate invitations to tea within the next month.

If she has to rehabilitate things with her bare hands, she will.

***

Fugaku, bless him, has no head for politics despite being raised from birth to lead a clan. Oh, he’s an impressive administrator-- he has to be, to run the military police on his father’s behalf. But Mikoto… she’s the one who can see the threads of schemes and motivations that tie together even the most innocuous of connections. She supposes this is what makes their partnership work. Fugaku keeps things working and gets things done, but she can see what makes people tick and knows how to leverage that.

These complementary skills, she knows, will ensure the clan’s prosperity.

***

As soon as the medics confirm her pregnancy, she submits her retirement paperwork. The clan expects it of her, but that’s not why she does it. There’s something rotten in Konoha-- something that Lord Third can’t or won’t see. There are whispers in the village whose origins are unknown. Inoichi doesn’t even know and that’s cause for alarm. They’re causing some hardliners in the clan to make noise.

So she retires and publicly hangs up her weapons pouch. Mikoto smiles serenely through the howls of her friends, of Kushina lamenting how they’ll never be on a team together again. Through it all, Shikaku eyeballs her with a shrewd look. All she answers him with is the barest lifting of her eyebrows.

The only good saboteur is the one no one sees coming. No one will see Mikoto. She will become a dutiful wife. Her accomplishments will be her housewifery. All anyone will know of the lady of the Uchiha will be her beauty and her social graces. The village will forget that her great-grandfather is Uchiha Izuna and that she’s a formidable jounin in her own right. She’ll train in secret and keep her ears to the ground. She’ll collect those secrets and draw the noose tighter and tighter. Izuna may not have believed in the truce with the Senju, but Mikoto does, and she will defend to the death the legacy her family helped create.

***

When they place her baby (swaddled, squalling, and still a little squished-looking) in her arms, Mikoto knows she’ll never let go. She’s exhausted, and half-determined to never go through that again despite needing to ensure that the heir has a spare.

One of the midwives brings Fugaku in to present her safely delivered son. He examines the baby with such intensity that Mikoto thinks he can convince himself that he can see through the blankets to count all ten fingers and toes.

“Itachi,” he declares with a glance at her. “He shall be called Itacht.”

Tears prickle at the corners of Mikoto’s eyes that have nothing to do with the pain she still feels in her pelvis. Fugaku named him after her father.

***

Somehow, and Mikoto isn’t sure how, Kushina manages to get herself into the compound to meet the baby before he’s even presented to the elders. Mikoto is still bedridden when Kushina flicks her gently on the forehead.

“I should have been here for this.”

Mikoto would say something witty to that, but she can feel her eyelids start to droop. She nods off to Kushina rocking Itachi and singing a hauntingly beautiful Uzushio lullaby.

***

Itachi is just a few weeks shy of his first birthday when Fugaku’s father dies and he becomes clan head. The change in role seems to lead to a change in personality, and Mikoto is not the only one to notice her husband become more emotionally distant from Itachi. She prays that it’s just the weight of his position taking up his focus and that it will change back when Itachi is old enough to learn at his knee.

***

Mikoto’s second pregnancy ends in miscarriage. So does her third. “These things do happen,” her medics tell her, even though she’s done everything right. Fugaku doesn’t withdraw, though, not like she expected he would. He’s never been much in tune with emotions (his own or anyone else’s), but every night, he stays in her bed with his arms wrapped around her.

She’s surprised at the comfort she finds in it.

***

Fugaku’s body is barely recognizable when it’s returned to the village.

It was supposed to be a quick mission. A safe mission. A clan head, _her husband_ , isn’t supposed to die on what should have been a milk run. Something isn’t right.

Mikoto is numb as she drapes herself in the mourning she never expected to wear so soon. As her hands skim her newly showing belly, all she can think of is how it’s too soon. Toosoontoosoontoosoon. None of her plans are nearly ready enough. Itachi is _too young_. No, she and Fugaku never loved each other, but they were good for each other. She beats back the voice in the back of her mind that tells her she doesn’t know what she’s doing.

_She knows one thing though…_

Elder Hyousuke is sitting in Fugaku’s study, waiting for her. She bows low to him, and then positions herself behind her husband’s desk. He narrows his eyes at her presumption to sit in her husband’s place, but says nothing admonishing. Instead, he proclaims, “We will be installing Itachi as clan head at sundown tomorrow, after the funeral.”

She clenches her teeth, but maintains the cool demeanor that has become so comfortingly ingrained. “He’s four years old.”

“He’s the heir.”

“He’s not even a genin yet.”

“You will recall that it was not the elders of this clan who forbade his entrance to the Academy at the same age as the Hatake heir.”

In an instant, Mikoto commits to her decision. Her eyes flash red so quickly that Hyousuke barely has time to register it. In the space of a blink, her genjutsu is layered so deeply that no one will know the thought didn’t occur organically. “I will be the next clan head.”

“You will be the next clan head,” he agrees placidly.

She folds her hands serenely. “Itachi doesn’t yet have the skills or the knowledge to lead a clan. I can lead the clan into a new era of prosperity.”

“The boy still has much to learn, and your connections in the village are invaluable.”

Mikoto lays down her last instruction. “As the chief elder, you will convince the rest to support this bid.”

“I will begin making preparations,” he agrees as he rises. He bows low to her. “Lady Mikoto, you have my deepest condolences for your loss.”

“Thank you, honored elder,” she responds. “Let me walk you to the door.”

_... a mother will do anything for her children._

**Author's Note:**

> Turns out, I can't let this universe go even when there are other fics I should be working on.


End file.
